


seed

by skaralding



Series: the source of flowers [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alpha Uchiha Itachi, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, No Uchiha Massacre, Omega Uchiha Sasuke, Pining, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:16:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26492530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skaralding/pseuds/skaralding
Summary: The realization that Itachi wanted something impossible didn’t hit him all at once. It crept up on him in slow, barely audible steps.To be brutally clear, the thing he wanted—the sin he desired—revealed itself with every year added to his brother’s age.
Relationships: Uchiha Itachi/Uchiha Sasuke
Series: the source of flowers [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1926088
Comments: 4
Kudos: 108





	seed

**Author's Note:**

> Ahahahah I managed a pretentious title (AND subtitles!!) for this too~ So proud of myself~~~
> 
> Anyway, this is that _bloom_ extra I promised from Itachi's POV. It's a long, lavish and probably unnecessary character study that I nevertheless hope you enjoy ;D

## blossom

The realization that Itachi wanted something impossible didn’t hit him all at once. It crept up on him in slow, barely audible steps.

To be brutally clear, the thing he wanted—the sin he desired—revealed itself with every year added to his brother’s age.

Sasuke was disgustingly adorable when he was three, five, and seven. He was always thinner than Itachi thought he should be, a mischievous little shadow with annoyingly sticky hands. He stole Itachi’s shuriken and kunai and came sniffling to Itachi’s door after injuring himself with them.

At nine years old, Sasuke’s hazy pink scent began to settle, to solidify into something sharper. As a consequence, Mother’s pointed corrections and smacks gained weight. _You’re too old to be hanging all over your brother like that, Sasuke,_ she’d say, ignoring his pained scowl and general wronged demeanour. _Sit by yourself._

Itachi often played a supporting role in those corrections, quizzing Sasuke now and then to make sure he understood the rules. _Don’t touch, don’t smell, don’t smile,_ the teaching rhyme went, and though that last admonishment was a bit outdated, it was still the safest course to take in formal or strained situations. Showing your teeth to someone you didn’t know just wasn’t done.

Sasuke, to be fair, did well enough in public. That he’d brawl with Academy friends or roll around on Itachi’s bed was only a sign of how comfortable he felt in both circumstances. Downstairs, or on the few occasions when Mother came stalking into Itachi’s room, Sasuke was increasingly, unwillingly polite, sitting perfectly still an arm’s length away from whoever he was with.

 _I want a hug,_ he still whispered, something like every other night. _I can’t go to sleep without one._

 _Liar,_ Itachi always said, even as he gave in. _Just this once._

That stopped in a hurry when Sasuke turned ten. His scent was still hazy, something between Mother’s dark, cold red and Father’s chilly lavender, but it was just stimulating enough that Itachi had to draw a line between them.

Mother was the first to notice, the first to give him a sardonic, yet sympathetic look the fifth morning Sasuke refused to talk to him. _He’s too young to understand,_ she said, after Sasuke stalked away to get ready for the Academy. _And even when he is old enough, he might still not understand; omegas are usually much less sensitive to scent than us alphas._

Itachi still remembered the way his face had burned, during that horrible conversation. Remembered how tightly Mother had controlled her own scent, how she had kept the polite distance between them even when she leaned forward, projecting a graceful air of comfort, of understanding.

 _It doesn’t mean anything,_ she’d said. _It’s only a reaction. It’ll be easier to manage soon enough._

Instead, it got worse. The taste of medium-strength blockers lingered on the back of Itachi’s tongue long after his first two ruts, because he found that fucking around only took the edge off the roiling mass of desire distorting his senses. Blockers helped him think past that intractable mass, but the only thing that really calmed him was a good, long whiff of Sasuke’s sweat, followed by an even longer round of masturbation.

Touch was an uncertain factor. Not touching anyone at all was impossible. Touching Sasuke as much as his traitorous, unreasonable body seemed to want was also impossible. Itachi struggled to find a balance between those two extremes, but never quite found one that satisfied him.

Staying out of the village as much as possible didn’t sit well with him; always being there for Sasuke’s increasing, incomprehensible tantrums and various rebellious escapades was even worse. The first time the decision was taken out of his hands by a six month assignment to the embassy in Suna, Itachi felt both terrified and relieved.

He knew by then that Mother suspected something, even though he’d tried to give no indication that his problem with Sasuke was still ongoing. She didn’t ask anything or, worse, try to offer Itachi any more advice, but she had a certain expression on her face as she stood with his smiling father and his sullen brother to send him off. _You can do this,_ her gaze seemed to say. _You can beat this._

In the end, all Itachi did was learn to hide. Those six months in Suna were a peculiarly relaxing sort of hell; his superiors on that mission praised him for his unwavering focus on completing objectives despite several attempts by various agents to prey on his youth and sexual inexperience. Truthfully, Itachi only had it easy because he was so thoroughly broken, so fixated on someone he couldn’t have that anyone that offered themselves could be no more than an appetizer.

Fucking other people took the edge off, but that was all it did, all it was good for. To satisfy himself, Itachi inked a seal beneath the cover flap of his laundry bag, filling the space it hid with Sasuke’s stolen boxers, Sasuke’s discarded towels, Sasuke’s stray socks. He rationed their exposure to the air, rotating out pieces whenever they lost that dizzying red-bronze stench, that almost bloody smell that Itachi had grown to need in his life.

He returned to the village two months later than planned, his calm facade now utterly unshakeable. To feed his unspoken wants, he made the poor but lucrative decision to fall under Shisui’s sway for a period of time. That was the last person he bothered even making a pretence of wanting to be with.

The fact that Mother watched his new steadiness with more pride than worry made him horribly sure he’d made the right decision.

* * *

## accelerant

Before the Suna mission, Itachi had used to let himself imagine what it would take to truly, properly sate his need for his brother just once. He’d soon stopped allowing himself those thoughts, because it was all too easy to think up scenarios that would give him the access and the justification he would require.

Access, because even back then, Sasuke had already been becoming more distant from him, if only due to their divergent careers and differing schedule. Justification because Itachi could simply not imagine taking sexual advantage of his brother without it, without some higher reason readily available to cloak his base purpose, and to lay the groundwork for a subsequent attempt.

Typically, when the stars finally aligned in a manner that might possibly let him fuck Sasuke just like in one of his most unrealistic fantasies, Itachi was too worried to properly enjoy it. Sasuke didn’t even look like himself, or like the kind of lean, muscled, dark-haired man Itachi usually vented with.

Reality was far less prepossessing than all his fevered dreams. In his imagination, Itachi had always thought Sasuke would be lightly disguised, and only in a manner that highlighted all of his good points. Dancing silks, gauzy robes, flimsy kimono… that sort of thing.

In reality, Sasuke looked and acted like a whore, a hesitant, insecure woman in flashy, cheap clothing. Only that familiar, blood-red scent kept Itachi aware that this wasn’t one of his usual mission partners, done up to hit nearly every single one of Itachi’s dislikes.

Sasuke had his long, heavily scented hair gathered into a loose, messy half ponytail with a heavy accessory that Itachi had to beware of when pulling him close. His skin-tight tank top looked too small to be comfortable, and clearly showed the outlines of a much-needed lacy white bra. And then there was that too-short skirt, one Sasuke was uneasy with, from the small, slightly clumsy steps he took, and the way he kept putting a hand down to prevent the nonexistent breeze from playing with it.

 _Can you walk in those?_ Itachi had wanted to ask, the moment he’d seen Sasuke unseal a pair of hot pink high heels. But he hadn’t said anything, too aware of the slight, embarrassed hunch to Sasuke’s shoulders. Which was a good thing, since the answer to his unspoken question would only have been a redundant ‘yes, mostly’, i.e. good enough to pass for a nervous woman.

(It had been so strange, seeing that unfamiliar, blandly pretty woman crouch down and narrow her eyes at the heel’s strappy laces just the way Sasuke would.)

 _Someone must have told him,_ Itachi had thought, even as he loudly ordered food for the two of them. _Surely he didn’t dress up like this by chance._ He couldn’t help but feel that he’d wasted the blocker he’d taken while they were changing; touching Sasuke’s trembling, unabashedly female body felt so strongly like mission requirements that taking the chance to grope Sasuke’s shoulder only made him feel mildly guilty.

The moment they were alone in their room on the ferry, though…

It wasn’t the kisses that did it, or the way Sasuke pressed those glorious tits against Itachi as his tank top was pulled off. It was, as always, as ever, that enchanting scent.

Itachi focused, then. He wasn’t surprised at Sasuke’s increasing stink of arousal; omegas were easy to rouse this way, the effect of their partner’s touch made more pronounced by how much they trusted said partner. He had read and read and re-read that specific section on the informational pamphlets the first time he’d seen it, thinking— _not_ thinking—and feeling a tide of pure need.

Which was why his old dreams had always featured Sasuke moaning under him, Sasuke helplessly feeling it all too much. The pamphlet’s warnings about how the trust-arousal feedback loop wasn’t universal to all omega had been roundly ignored. The fact that there was a chance Sasuke could want him, could enjoy his forbidden touch… it had seemed appropriate to Itachi to grant himself the petty triumph of his brother succumbing to him like that, while he was still undisciplined enough to allow himself fantasies of it happening.

In his fantasies, there had always been a stopping point. A point where Itachi wrested himself back under control, all while thinking that the filthy acts he’d perpetrated on Sasuke’s unresisting body were the limit. That the wicked pleasure he’d already felt was all that was possible, all he could get.

In reality, Itachi didn’t so much wrest himself back under control as hang onto it with gritted teeth, refusing to let go.

He tried not to think too much about what he was doing. Then, when it became clear Sasuke was being tortured by his unavoidable intake of Bloom, Itachi paused to swallow another blocker.

 _I’m going to have to be careful,_ he thought. Yet he wasn’t careful enough.

Not using a condom the first time wasn’t smart, but since the thug Itachi was pretending to be wouldn’t have bothered with one, he’d allowed himself that risk. It felt good inside Sasuke, soft, slick and yielding in that way that sometimes caught him off guard when he hadn’t been with a woman in a while, but it wasn’t so good that Itachi could no longer think. He even had more than enough control to hold it in while Sasuke’s needy cunt rippled around him; he felt a pulse of prideful satisfaction when he managed to pull out well in time.

Which immediately proved to be a mistake. Sasuke looked so dazed, his spread thighs trembling, his empty cunt spasming around nothing. Itachi struggled for a long, terrifying moment against the urge to activate his eyes to record that glorious sight. _Too suspicious,_ he told himself. And then added, a beat later: _Besides, it wouldn’t be right._

What he’d done was already bad enough. He didn’t need to plunge his fingers deep into Sasuke’s cunt. He didn’t need to keep _talking_ to Sasuke, asking low, dirty rhetorical questions like he would of any sexual partner. The fact that his behaviour fit the thuggish character he was playing didn’t make it any less true that he was taking advantage of his brother.

After all, Itachi hadn’t chosen to play a thug just because their pursuers wouldn’t expect such an act from the reserved, polite diplomat he’d been all through this mission. He’d wanted…

“I…” Sasuke said, his voice a thin, fevered thread, “I need…”

He hadn’t dared to hope for something like this. Sasuke’s thick scent was everywhere. He was so wet inside, so greedy for Itachi’s cock that he kept lifting his hips, angling up to meet each thrust.

 _I can’t,_ Itachi kept thinking. It was just so _easy_ , so fucking easy, even with Sasuke’s cunt tightening around him again. _He’s going to come again, and I’ll—I’ll—_

Itachi swallowed. He had to be careful now. He couldn’t allow himself any more mistakes. He couldn’t let things go on like this, with him so close to the edge that rocking in and out of Sasuke felt like it would be enough to tip him over it. Slowly, he pulled Sasuke close against him, close enough that there was no way to ignore the feel of his brother’s sweaty, massive tits, that stark reminder that they were still on mission.

 _Bad idea,_ Itachi thought, almost immediately. Like this, Sasuke’s scent was so strong it made him shiver, that wild, lovely red, shot through with the musky stench of the come he’d let out all over Sasuke’s chest just a few moments ago. _Fuck._

He couldn’t help but feel glad Sasuke was so out of it, silent and pliant in his iron grip. Even though that was playing to all the wrong instincts ( _fill him up, he needs it_ ), it was also a reminder of Itachi’s very real responsibility.

 _Can’t come inside him,_ he kept thinking. _Can’t get him pregnant._ Somehow, he managed to refocus enough that he didn’t let the urge to spill inside his brother take him over. Then, after a few more breathless, careful thrusts, Itachi slowed, pulling out entirely.

He weathered Sasuke’s plaintive moan. _He doesn’t really want it,_ Itachi reminded himself, forcefully, even as he encouraged his brother to turn over onto his hands and knees. _This is all just that fucking drug._

Taking Sasuke like this wasn’t any less stimulating, but at least leaning in close over him now only gave a faceful of the sickeningly sweet stuff he’d used on his hair. _Pretend it isn’t him,_ Itachi told himself. _Pretend it’s just some woman._

One shocked gasp from Sasuke unravelled everything. His voice… even while he was disguised as a woman, he didn’t sound all that different. He’d used to bug Itachi for tips on how to mask that.

All of those tips were in use right now. But it was still so clearly Sasuke, Sasuke’s scent, Sasuke’s shocked, breathless gasp. Itachi could feel his brother’s body trembling with each forceful thrust. _He likes it,_ he thought, and the chakra he’d been attempting to channel to soothe himself down below surged, making him even more sensitive.

Itachi knew he was going to come, but he didn’t stop thrusting. He could hear the harsh, greedy breaths rattling through his chest; he could hear the meaty smack of his hips against Sasuke’s plump arse. Pleasure spiked through him as he poured out spurt after spurt deep within Sasuke.

Control went out the window after that. _One more time,_ Itachi thought, dazedly. His knot was already aching, swelling greedily within the sweet pressure of Sasuke’s slippery cunt. _I’ll let it out just one more time, and then…_

The next orgasm was violent enough that it finally cleared his head.

 _Good,_ Itachi told himself. _Fucking up any more than this would only make things worse._ Pulling out of Sasuke felt wrong, but he forced himself to do it anyway, glad again of Sasuke’s blank, helpless lust. _He probably won’t even blame me, afterwards, even though he should, if—_

He refused to allow himself to finish that thought. _Focus,_ he thought, but of course he couldn’t, not with Sasuke’s empty wetness so near, so open to his touch. Pathetic as it was, just feeling the mingled wetness of Sasuke’s juices and his own come was centring.

 _I can’t let him find out,_ Itachi kept thinking. It wasn’t hard to maintain the thuggish act, not when each action needed for the pretence was so satisfying. Even as he very properly notified Sasuke of the trip he’d be making to deal with the ferry’s monitoring, he took sick pleasure in licking deep into Sasuke’s mouth.

There was no need to go further, no need to encourage—okay, force Sasuke to stuff his leaking pussy with his own fingers, but that didn’t stop Itachi. The disgust he felt for himself only heightened the thrill of seeing his brother like that, spread-eagled and pliant and so delightfully obedient.

He spent more time than was perhaps necessary on figuring out a way to save the footage of him and Sasuke, going so far as to sacrifice a precious blank videotape from his mission stash for the purpose. Doing so didn’t cross any lines he hadn’t already left far behind him on this cursed (blessed) mission, but it still made Itachi feel as if he fully deserved the awkwardness of transferring said footage to the sound of the slumbering security guard’s thunderous snores.

 _Disgusting,_ he scolded himself, again, even as he stored that precious, filthy videotape in the seal he used for important personal effects. _I need to do better._

He knew exactly what to do to fix things. He’d left his shadow clone with Sasuke; all he needed to do was take another blocker and wait for it to take effect. Pathetic as it was to have his clone run interference for him in that way, it would at least be a step towards regaining enough self-control that he could help Sasuke without taking too much advantage of him.

 _Pathetic it is, then,_ he thought, on his way back. _Fast-acting blockers need what, again, half an hour?_

Itachi didn’t even last two minutes.

It wasn’t all his fault. He’d just knocked back the pill when he heard a heavy, telltale grunt through the thin door separating him from whatever was going on in the room. Whatever was very definitely going on in the room.

 _I can’t,_ Itachi thought, and then his hand was on the doorknob, and it was all too easy to step in and close the door he was supposed to have been on the other side of.

It was just as he’d imagined. His disguised clone was hard at work on top of Sasuke, slamming down upon his brother’s writhing body with suspicious enthusiasm, their movements making the bed squeak beneath them.

The sight was electric. It was all Itachi could do to react calmly, to look upon Sasuke’s shame and desperation and respond with careful, soothing words. The clone, unlike him, hadn’t lost all semblance of honour; when it finally pulled out of Sasuke’s sopping cunt, it was still erect.

It had done so much better than he had. Its fragmented thoughts had been focused on yielding to Sasuke’s advances just enough to soothe Sasuke without making things worse. Its arms had trembled as it forced itself to vary its pace, to endure the terrible pressure of each of Sasuke’s orgasms.

 _I **will** do better,_ Itachi told himself. _That I couldn’t even keep it in as well as my own clone…_

And then, as he got back onto the bed, staunchly determined to make up for his former errors, he heard Sasuke say, in the midst of other, unimportant, unnecessary things: “I did this on purpose.”

For a moment, all of Itachi’s thought processes ground to a halt.

Then they started up again, and it was all Itachi could do to keep his mouth from stretching into a reckless smile. His self-recrimination, his resigned disgust with his own weakness, all of that evaporated.

He couldn’t help but menace Sasuke then, goaded to it by the very real guilt in his brother’s teary, wide-eyed gaze. The rush he felt on fondling him then was better than anything he’d imagined, better than even his very best fantasy. Never had he dreamed that he’d be gifted this level of iron-clad justification, the kind that allowed him to set his teeth to Sasuke’s neck and bite in deeply, and feel Sasuke shudder in his arms without the slightest attempt to get away.

* * *

Itachi’s control improved after that electrifying revelation. Getting what he’d always wanted made everything easier.

There was still the occasional hiccup, of course. He’d meant to mark Sasuke ‘accidentally’ once they’d rejoined the rest of the team, but he hadn’t meant to get so absorbed in the filthy satisfaction of it that Sasuke passed out near the end.

The fact that Sasuke’s resulting exhaustion would only serve to support Itachi’s planned lies about having lost control didn’t make him feel any better. In fact, it made him feel worse.

 _I don’t deserve him,_ he couldn’t help but think, even as he rearranged Sasuke’s limp body as best as he could, ignoring the mingled pleasure and discomfort of Sasuke’s cunt tightening involuntarily around his swollen knot. _Claiming him so roughly, so publicly, without asking permission…_

Itachi was treading a hair-thin line. On the one hand, everything Sasuke had done up till now had made it perfectly clear he was willing belong to Itachi, desperately so. Logically, the fact that Sasuke could very well be pregnant meant that someone needed to take responsibility; even in these modern times, anyone who gave birth while unmarked was looked down on.

Shameful as it was to have Itachi mark his own brother, it was something he would have been ordered to do anyway, once the team returned to the village. Marking a close relative carried a stigma, yes, but one slightly less bad than allowing said relative to give birth unmarked, and it _was_ one of the ways traditional clans covered up inappropriate liaisons when they didn’t wish to acknowledge the true sire of the child or allow said sire public claim on clan resources.

But there was a difference between the stiff, quiet, painstakingly formal ceremony Mother would have held a week after their return, and the rushed, awkward field version led by Yamanaka Rui, her calm questions at odds with the knife-sharp glances she kept sending Itachi’s way.

With this version, there was no way Sasuke would ever be able to convince himself that Itachi was committing to him out of a sense of duty, not even a little bit. Duty could have been served with so much less.

With this version, the bond between them wasn’t completely official, but it required a sizeable amount of paperwork and a hearing to dissolve, which was just one hearing short of what you needed to obtain a divorce certificate.

Usually, whenever an alpha got so muddled and/or greedy as to mark someone they shouldn’t have while on mission, the alpha was offered a choice. They could acknowledge the bond they’d formed—opening themselves up to paying reparations to the other party if the bond wasn’t wanted—and receive an official demerit and other minor sanctions. They could choose not to acknowledge anything, and receive much harsher punishment, up to and including a demotion in rank.

Itachi wasn’t surprised that opting to acknowledge what he’d done failed to endear him to Rui-san or Hatake-san. It was the least that was expected of any jonin, especially one with his reputation and service record. ‘I lost control’ could serve a genin or a particularly new chunin as an excuse; for any jonin, it was an egregious admission of failure, as good as saying you were unfit to hold your rank.

Itachi hadn’t said that particular phrase, but he might as well have. Even as he felt Hatake-san’s ominously pleasant gaze wash over him for the thirtieth time, adding another month to the estimate of how long he’d keep finding himself forcibly assigned all the missions no one wanted, he couldn’t help but feel another hot surge of satisfaction.

Once the mission report was filed, it would be official; in the eyes of the law, Sasuke would be his. Unquestionably his.

* * *

Naturally, their parents didn’t see things that way.

Before Itachi fell to his knees before Mother’s narrowed gaze, he had a plan. He knew exactly how badly she and Father would react to his confession, and how violently she would disagree with his aim to fulfil his new, slightly shaky legal obligation to Sasuke.

Mother and Father would demand a dissolution of the bond, would outright order one. Itachi would refuse to go through with it in just the right fashion to goad Mother into losing her temper; once she sprang at him, it wouldn’t be difficult to ensure he ended up with bloody, obvious wounds.

There was a specific, curdled scent alphas released when they came to blows with another alpha. It was difficult to control it, especially while flooded with the instinctual urge to tear into a challenger, but though Mother was perfectly capable of that kind of ironclad command over herself, it wouldn’t be able to save the situation once they clashed. Itachi would release the scent and tear open his own skin regardless of what she did. She would know what he was doing, and she would do everything possible to keep him from leaving her home reeking of bloody conflict, but even if she successfully detained him, he would still be the victor.

If he left the house looking like he’d fought with her, there would be even more attention, more prurient scrutiny on their family. The very thing his parents hoped to hide would only come to light more quickly.

Preventing Itachi from leaving, on the other hand, would cost them. Mother would need to all but cripple him to do that, and if she did, Sasuke would never forgive her.

The latter scenario was, in some ways, the last thing Itachi wanted, because it would leave very little room for reconciliation. More precisely, it would strain his parents’ relationship with Sasuke to the breaking point. That they and Itachi would now forever be at odds was something he could accept; if they came to that point with _Sasuke_ , on the other hand… Itachi could accept that too, but it would leave a bitter taste in his mouth. Worse, it would hurt Sasuke, Sasuke who had always been Mother’s pet, no matter how much she scolded him.

Which meant Itachi needed to be careful. He could not allow his parents to force concealment or separation on him and Sasuke, but he could not push them too far in their inevitable disagreement.

He was making a good start of the whole thing when Sasuke stumbled in on the discussion.

Itachi hadn’t planned for that to happen so early in the process, especially not with Sasuke looking like that, soft and uncertain and infuriatingly stubborn. Yet in the end that stubbornness saved them both, delivering them the ideal result Itachi had hardly dared hope for, all without either of them coming away from their parents’ home with so much as a scratch.

 _I don’t deserve you,_ Itachi desperately wanted to say. _I don’t deserve this._

He thought up all kinds of reasons not to say such a thing. It would be horribly awkward to say anything while they were still in the street. Then, when they reached Itachi’s apartment, it occurred to him that Sasuke had already made a choice, one that made that self-blaming statement crass to say. What Sasuke needed right now was his comfort, his soothing attention. Sasuke needed to be held. Sasuke needed to scold him, and for him to accept said scolding.

Deep down, Itachi knew what kept him from saying the sordid truth. Even as he felt Sasuke’s breathing ease off into the gentle rhythm that signalled Sasuke had fallen asleep, he felt irrationally convinced that saying those words out loud would provoke some shadowy force into rising up and snatching Sasuke from his grasp.

 _I don’t care if I deserve you,_ was his final, muddled thought that night. _I’m keeping you anyway._

* * *

## resolution

Strangely, Itachi’s determination to face the storm of gossip head-on had an unexpected effect. By the time he realized that people were taking his blunt declaration that he was the father of Sasuke’s child as a clever evasion due to a technicality rather than the actual truth, Akina was two months old, and Itachi had no leftover energy to put towards trying to fix their misconceptions.

It wasn’t until a year and half later that he realized those misconceptions hadn’t come about by chance, and by then, Itachi had weathered enough of his then-new boss’s scheming to understand that there was zero chance of reversing the situation, much less getting revenge. There were two choices when Minato-sama wanted something of you: acceptance, and grudging, reluctant, ‘I’m giving in after being thrashed to within an inch of my life’ acceptance.

(“It’s a shame I’ll never get your nomination past the council,” Minato sighed, just moments after yet another meeting where he’d smiled while Itachi wielded the knife, _again_. Then, after rambling at length about who would block Itachi as the potential Hokage (a comforting number of people, which naturally included Itachi’s forever-disapproving parents), Minato had added: “You’d think your mother would appreciate all I’ve done for your reputation in the village, and yet… Let that be a lesson to you, Itachi-kun; never underestimate the ability of your clansmen to hold the most irrational grudges.”)

(Itachi still had nightmares about waking up one day to find the Hokage’s hat sitting on his bedside table, with a signed, perfectly legal voting record folded neatly beneath it.)

The worst thing was how relieved Sasuke had been when he realized the turn that public opinion had taken. “It’s still annoying, of course,” he’d said, “but it’s bearable, you know? And this way, it won’t affect Akina’s marriage…”

In the end, the only way Itachi could vent his frustration on the matter was making it excruciatingly clear how little he wanted to hear such speculation. And in addition, when Sasuke inevitably complained about how unfair it was that people never gossiped in front of _him_ , if they were alone and there was sufficient time, it was a pleasantly easy way for Itachi to make his favourite type of apology: the type that ended with Sasuke moaning in his arms.

“You’re the worst,” Sasuke often whispered, at times like that. “You—you always—”

“You like it,” Itachi always said, in response. And then added, because he could never help himself: “Tell me you like it.”

He never tired of hearing Sasuke’s breathless answer.


End file.
